Jury deliberates in horse abuse case

Can a horse owner escape an animal cruelty conviction if his animal dies — while he's 2,000 miles away?

That question was the battleground in a Colusa court Tuesday as 12 jurors and Judge S. William Abel considered the two felony cruelty charges against John B. Allen Jr.

Prosecutors accuse him of neglecting his two horses for more than three weeks last July without enough water, leaving one to die and the other, gravely weakened, in county care.

Jurors left Superior Court without reaching a verdict in the three-week trial. Deliberations are to resume at 9 a.m. today.

The trial stemmed from the July 27 discovery of a dead 16-year-old brown named Justin on Allen's property near River and Laux Roads north of Colusa.

Also seized was Gal, a 18-year-old female American paint, which county investigators described as emaciated and weakened after enduring temperatures over 100 degrees.

Despite checking on the animals only twice in seven weeks — the last time on July 5 — their owner said he tried to assure their water supply while he made plans that included two weeks at an air show in Oshkosh, Wis.

"I didn't need to (check further); they should have been fine," Allen said under cross-examination from District Attorney John R. Poyner. "They should've been OK for two weeks."

But for Allen and his animals, things unraveled. He testified that his teenage son failed to properly follow instructions to check on the horses and their water supply, and that poor cell phone reception at a Wisconsin airplane show he attended for two weeks further hampered his efforts to keep in touch with matters at home.

Then, sometime in July, a water pump on Allen's property failed, eventually leaving the horses unable to drink from their troughs.

"There's a lot of things I could have done, but I didn't think the water was going to stop," Allen testified.

Allen's defense attorney, Dave Weiner, attacked the county for rushing to judgment about how Justin died and exaggerating Gal's poor health.

The surviving horse, Weiner said, suffered more harm from county workers giving it excessive water after seizing it. He also suggested that Justin may have succumbed to West Nile virus or eating toxic plants, and accused the county of blocking him from doing a necropsy on the dead animal.

"Not only is this horse not emaciated," he said, showing photographs of Gal, "it's in the same condition it's been for years: an athletic working animal."

Poyner, unmoved, said the prosecution had no duty to produce the surviving horse and called Allen's treatment of the animals callous on its face.

"He didn't even check on the horses for 22 days — and it was up to 106 degrees on some of those days," he said.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 458-2121 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com.